Campin, Robert

Valenciennes, 1375 - Tournai, 1444

Saint Barbara

1438. Oil on oak panel, 101 x 47 cm.

Saint Barbara reads by the light of a fireplace in a richly appointed room. The key to her identity lies outside the window that opens onto a landscape with a tower, her customary attribute. That is where her father, Dioscoro, imprisoned her to avoid her conversion to Christianity. Campin´s painting is one of the finest examples of primitive Flemish artists´ skill at representing indoor scenes and was a model for many later works. It bears the artist´s characteristic traits, including wide-featured faces and the shape of the folds, as well as his interest in depicting the qualities of each material. This work is paired with Saint John the Baptist and the Franciscan, Heinrich von Werl (P01513), as the two were the doors of a triptych whose central panel has been lost.